


The Sylvia Plath Effect

by emotional_ejaculation



Category: OC - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Standalone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 06:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10212011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emotional_ejaculation/pseuds/emotional_ejaculation
Summary: Girl next door.





	

Yorkie; in pajamas that are patterned with moons and suns. 

KJ; in slacks and a tie. He soaks his footballer body in a heady cologne, and checks himself out in the mirror. 

“Where to are we sporting stylish angst on this fine night, Keneti?” Yorkie yells over to her annoying neighbor. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know, mouse?” KJ yells back to his annoying neighbour.

Yorkie, struggling to open her old window, pauses to feign her feelings hurt by pressing her hand to her chest. 

“I would, in fact. I’d like to know what Keneti James does on his Saturday evenings when there are no smart, independent ladies around.” 

“Go away...” 

“I’m doing very well, Keneti! How are you?” 

“Yorkie…” She shakes her head, continuing. 

“I don’t really have plans tonight, no. Its s’pposed to rain today so I figured I would stockpile some books and sit by the window. Y’know my dad has that office on the second floor, with that window bed…I have this giant waffle knit sweater I burrow in on rainy days…” She rambles, while KJ pushes his hair back a bit more and switches his jacket, before her eyes widen and she nearly falls out of the house. 

“Oh, why don’t you come read with me? Wouldn’t that be fun!” KJ’s fingers tense in his hair, and he thinks it might be because she’s…a bomb in her approach and personality; bright, dangerous, and loud. 

“No.” 

…  
He stumbles up the driveway sometime past midnight, he didn’t really know. It might’ve been 5AM, but he wouldn’t know. He had spent the night watching his friends get drunk off their asses. He was pretty drunk by now too, though. He stutters into his bedroom, turns on the lamp that covers the room in a cool blue. 

He doesn’t even have to check to know that Yorkie was still up, but he looks anyway. She is clad in a white t-shirt that could’ve been a dress, and her hair is a wild commitment of curls and confusingly strawberry streaks. She is dancing to some indie band, a wine glass dangling from her fingertips. Looked like getting drunk was on everyone’s list that night.  
She is incredibly girly in her appearance. A soft face that is pale, but drawn up with strikingly bold features like the high rise of her cheekbones, the bright orange freckles that seemed individually painted on by some God, or the flash of thin, light brows that wrote out every frequent shift of emotion she experienced. Her pushbutton nose that turned up at its point but from underneath hung a small gold ring resting right above her cupids bow, down into her rosebud lips that gathered like a cherry against her chin, and surrounding her head were the slew of tendrils upon tendrils of strawberry blonde waves. Make-up never had the privilege to touch her face. 

His shiny red hair was styled in that Ivy League cut, that complimented his squinty hazel eyes that were arched by thick curved brows that rested on his forehead. His varsity jacket-the works. Rolled skinnies that made out his legs to be strips of spaghetti. 

Yorkie and KJ had never been friends. Even at the age of fifteen-Yorkie moving in. Things played out like this:

Enter Yorkie. Three months shy of fifteen. A bright girl for her age-an intellect. Odd, but comfortable with her oddness. He called her Mouse because she was practically unnoticeable in appearance when she got there. But then sixteen turned up and practically left KJ on his ass-now he just called her Mouse for sentimental reasons. He blamed the close proximity of their bedrooms-he could see her through her near transparent shades, (she said she preferred the warm wake up of the sun rather the unforgiving alarm placed precariously on her dresser) he watched her grow up. Her watched her room change-she watched his room change. He heard her mother’s yells echoing through the house early in the night-she heard the only conversation circulating his house that coming from the television speakers. 

.... 

 

Her sad girl breath makes him dizzy. This girl is laughing with her eyes and she’s there but so far away. Her hair is silver but she’s not even seventeen. He thinks this girl is like a calm Sunday afternoon and he can’t stop thinking that Yorkie is like coffee and car alarms. This girl is a dream-a young Winona Ryder combined with the nonchalance of a florist. He wonders if she likes books-painting, maybe. If she’d get her lips off his neck he could ask, but he figures there will be time for that later. 

.....

Yorkie is sitting on her windowsill-legs pulled close to her body, illuminated by the sun, with a copy of blah in her lap. She has the phone close to her ear and her eyes are closed. She is laughing like the person on the other line is the funniest person she had encountered. KJ feels something upsetting with that thought. 

KJ stops what he is doing to admire this moment of dissociation. His voice rings out like warm chocolate melting through her ears-as soothing as it is, she’s on the phone and upset. 

“Pinned you more for a Virginia Woolf fan.” 

She covers the microphone with her chest and starkly replies, “This is more in my attention range.” His laugh rings out, and she thinks it’s silvery. She learned that word a few days before-it meant gentle, clear and melodious. As his eyes catch the light, her friends words bubble in her ear and it feels like slow motion as he moves back into the shade of his teenage-bedroom, leaving the window open. He removes his shirt just as slowly, the heat making the atmosphere even more lethargic. He then goes to close the blinds. He looks at her through his lashes at last, smiling smugly and disappearing, leaving Yorkie with nothing to eat but her imagination. 

....

Summer hits harder than KJ remembers.

It pushes at him, keeps him stripped down to basketball shorts while he's splayed across his bed, the fan blades turning sluggishly. It makes it hard to breathe, after everything, lazing in the vaguely cooler air.

Yorkie’s only concessions to the heat are a t-shirt, bare feet, one fourth of an exposed calf hanging off the bed, and the fan spitting lukewarm air around the room. His shirt pulls across his shoulders but has so much give everywhere else.

Trying to get ready for school in the dark, the curtains pulled tight against the early morning sun. The only sounds in the room the whisper of fabric as he pulls off one shirt for the next. He opens the blinds then. She’s there, twirling in the mirror. With her wild hair and yellow sundress, looking like something straight out of a good-girl cliché. It makes him kind of angry. 

Inside, the dishwasher shifts into the rinse cycle. The floorboards they are both standing on creak. His sweatshirt remains on the bed and her stereo starts playing a new CD. Her house is pretty much dead silent aside from the soft music-below his bedroom, his parents move about and begin their day. Hers were long gone by seven.


End file.
